Deserted As A Baby, She Still Asks Why

Only when she was older, sure of her emotions and confident her adoptive parents would understand, did Debbie McAlister start looking for who she was.

''The first question that comes to mind, and has always been there, is why?'' McAlister said from her home in Simi Valley, Calif. ''I want to know, why was I abandoned?''

Police in 1954, like McAlister today, had many questions but no answers. They never found her parents.

Three decades have turned McAlister's search into a difficult journey, a ride along a shadowy trail of destroyed records, dead officials and faded memories.

Old newspaper stories about her abandonment gave some clues. They described her as a happy and healthy baby who doctors estimated was 6 to 8 weeks old.

But the stories dead-end beyond that dark stairwell in what now is Orlando Regional Medical Center. The questions about her birth parents persist.

''Why couldn't they have kept me and struggled for awhile?'' she asks. ''Were there other children involved? Do I have brothers or sisters? Was it a loving situation, was it a rape incident?''

On and on they go, questions without answers.

''I wonder if I have a mother, and if she is still alive,'' McAlister said. ''There's got to be somebody still around who can answer that. There's got to be a father, or a friend, if there's no mother.''

Her best hope, she said, is that someone will read about her, remember something and come forward.

''It's probably very slim, but I've got to take that chance,'' she said. ''It's like I'm a mystery. I haven't been solved yet.''

McAlister's memories begin several years after that morning at the hospital, and several years after she was adopted by Air Force engineer Robert Stell and his wife, Lois.

The couple lived in Eau Gallie, south Brevard County, at the time they adopted Debbie but moved often during the years -- to Alabama, to Virginia and back to Florida.

McAlister remembers the snow in Arlington, Va., and walking to grade school. She recalls later moving to Cocoa Beach and riding a bicycle to the shore with her two younger sisters, or going alone to write poetry or just think.

The milestones of her life are those common to many of us: graduation from Satellite High School, graduation from Chapman College at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., her marriage in 1974 to Dane McAlister in the United Methodist Church at Satellite Beach and the birth of her children. Molly is 7, Kelly, 5, and Nathan, 2.

McAllister, a teacher's aide, receives support for her search from her husband, a 33-year-old manager of inventory control at a word processing plant. ''He's been my secretary, typing all my letters.''

Hers has been a good life, McAlister said, one that would make her birth parents proud.

''There is no hatred toward them. I have had a very good upbringing, very loving parents and a wonderful family,'' she said.''If they had to give me up, I think they did the right thing.''

Although her adoptive parents were open about the adoption, McAlister kept the information secret from others during her childhood.

''Adopted. I hated the word,'' she said. ''It made me feel so awkward, so different. It hit a nerve in me.

''I never told any of my boyfriends. I never told any of my best friends. It was my little secret,'' she said. ''I just didn't think people would understand. Maybe they would pity or alienate me or really wouldn't understand what it was like.''

When she was 12 or 13, McAlister asked her mother about the parents who had abandoned her.

''I didn't think she could handle it,'' said Mrs. Stell, who lives 75 miles north of Los Angeles in Ventura, Calif. ''I told her that I knew nothing about her parents, but that maybe they might have been in an automobile accident.'' Mrs. Stell said she and her husband support their daughter's efforts to find her birth parents.

''I've always felt sorry for her mother,'' Mrs. Stell said. ''She missed so much, the growing up, the birthdays, the graduations, the grandchildren.''

Not until many years later, during McAlister's first pregnancy, did mother and daughter discuss the issue of her birth parents again.

McAlister had begun wondering about her own medical background because of questions that her doctor asked. She approached her mother again and was told that she was abandoned.

''I thought I was abandoned in a trash can somewhere, and she said, 'No, I think it was in a hospital where people would take care of you,' '' McAlister said.

Two years ago McAlister read a story in a Simi Valley magazine about adoptees. She attended a local meeting of the Adoptees Birth Parent Association, a support group for adoptees, and began thinking about looking for her parents.

Again she pressed her parents for details. Where was she abandoned? Who handled her adoption? Names, were there any names?

She contacted the Children's Home Society headquarters in Jacksonville. The society's branch office in Daytona Beach had handled her adoption in circuit court in Titusville.